Polybius
Ancient Greek historian · Writers · Lived 200 BC to 120 BC · aged 80
Polybius is read about 764 times a day, in 71 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?Greek historian whose front-row seat to Rome's conquest of the Mediterranean produced the only surviving chronicle of that pivot - and whose notes on checks, balances, and mixed government landed centuries later in the hands of Montesquieu, Locke, and the men writing the American Constitution.
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Photos 8
Gipsmodelle Wiener Historismus Hofburg-Keller 2012 33 Alois Düll, Polybios
Abrégé des Commentaires de M. de Folard sur l'histoire de Polybe.jpg?width=1200)
Figures de l'histoire de la république romaine accompagnées d'un précis historique ou Tableau philosophique et politique de l'origine des progrès et de la décadence de la liberté chez les... - btv1b550033070 (127 of 206)
Gipsmodelle Wiener Historismus Hofburg-Keller 2012 31_(14595055160).jpg?width=1200)
Ivsti LipsI De militia Romana libri qvinqve - commentarivs ad Polybivm (1602) (14595055160)_(14595059580).jpg?width=1200)
Ivsti LipsI De militia Romana libri qvinqve - commentarivs ad Polybivm (1602) (14595059580)_(14595071060).jpg?width=1200)
Ivsti LipsI De militia Romana libri qvinqve - commentarivs ad Polybivm (1602) (14595071060)_(14595113819).jpg?width=1200)
Ivsti LipsI De militia Romana libri qvinqve - commentarivs ad Polybivm (1602) (14595113819)In their own words 8
, In all human affairs, and especially in those that relate to war, ...leave always some room to fortune, and to accidents which cannot be foreseen.
This is a sworn treaty made between us, Hannibal … and Xenophanes the Athenian … in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece.
How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece?
In their orbit
About this person
Polybius lived through the middle Hellenistic period, roughly 200 to 118 BC, and set out to write a universal history explaining how Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean world. His Histories covered 264 to 146 BC in granular detail - Italy, Iberia, Greece, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt, Africa - documenting the Punic Wars, the Macedonian Wars, and the mechanics of imperial expansion. What survived is the only substantial Hellenistic historical work we have, but it carried more than narrative: Polybius analyzed constitutional evolution, articulated the theory of mixed government, and described separation of powers and the role of popular assemblies in ways that would directly shape Enlightenment political thought. He was also a close friend and mentor to Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman general, and that relationship gave him access and left a mark on Roman strategy. The distant blueprint made it to Philadelphia.
Writers born in the 200s BC 6
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